It's that time of the year again. Here's wishing a
happy and safe holiday season to everyone. Plagos make
excellent stocking stuffers and psychocrystals can add that
'warmth' as a fireplace decor. Word has it that the
Queen has a chimney leading straight into a psycho-chamber in
hopes to catch herself on big elf this year. From the
archives last year, sing along everyone:

On the
Twelfth day of Christmas, Commander Walsh gave to me:

Twelve
Goosemans Goosing,

Eleven
Blasters blasting,

Ten
Plagos bumbling,

Nine
Kiwis dancing,

Eight
Spy Droids,

Seven
Black Hole bandits,

Six
Mellie-poo's!,

Five
Evil Queens,

Four
shining badges,

Three
data discs,

Two
robosteeds and a Bubblehead in a pear tree...

And
remember....

Watch
out for the snow if you're traveling!

Ken Landgraf has gotten his own
domain name this month. Check out www.kenlandgraf.com
sometime. You'll find some really nice artwork for sale
there including original G.R. stuff!

A
little behind this month, but finals are here
(finally). Looking through the email box tonight I
found an email that Ken sent along with a little bit about
G.R. promo items and working on the series:

....It was wonderful reading all your comments about the
show. It was fun seeing the toys also. I remember going to
Burger King and seeing the Galaxy Rangers promotion... I
think action figures were given out . I still have the
special napkin that was printed especially for Burger
King.

Another thing that was weird about GR is that bathrooms were
in the same loft space so when someone went to the
"can" somebody always threw wet toilet tissue or a
rubber band over the stall at you!! Looking back it was
pretty funny! Sometimes guys would shoot rubber bands at you
from behind your back... that was very annoying since we
were suppose to be drawing... towards the end of the series
everybody started showing up late for work because we knew
the show was to end. I lived in New York City at the time so
I'd arrive on time.... other guys commuted in from Long
Island and Staten Island.

Thursday
11-30-00 - R.B.

Happy
Anniversary

One year ago, on November 7, 1999 (archive),
Betamountain.org became a website. Through the help and
coordinated efforts from the fans of the series (thanks to
everyone for their contributions), this site was made
possible. As it stands, we've got a ways to go before
completing the site, but here we are, one year later.
Not too shabby for an idea that was tossed around for 2 or 3
years (even longer than I may know) before it materialized.

One of the finer pleasures of working on the site is the
chance to hear from the people that actually worked on the
series. To quote a chat that took place yesterday,
"We have a pretty impressive list
of "in contact with's, considering that the show is 14
years old now," and it's true! We've had
the pleasure of hearing from Robert Mandell, Christopher
Rowley, Dan Fiorella, Ken Landgraf and John Rawlins over the
past year. It's great to see people that are connected
with their fan-base and who take time out of their day to say
"hi." Thanks.

So, we've got this name rented for another year.
Hopefully we'll get the episode guide finished and tidy up
loose ends in that period. Until then, keep dropping
by, join the mail list if you haven't already, check us out
on IRC (kudos to Heidi, our little IRCOp) and keep your
fingers crossed for a DVD release (sorry, I had to mention
that....).

Betamountain.org

Wednesday
11-29-00 - R.B.

He
promised it and he delivered it! Dan
Fiorella (see credits)
submitted his Episode Guide entry for Space
Moby this week. Thanks to Dan for taking the time
to re-tell the tale and thanks to Ryan Murphy for kicking the
Web TV into high gear, supplying the entry with screen
caps. Do you have a favorite episode? Submit an
Ep Guide entry by contacting epguideentry@betamountain.org!

Be sure to check out the LINKS
section. 19 sites are currently list. Is yours?

Saturday
11-25-00 - R.B.

Hope
everyone had a safe and good holiday. Got word back
from Ken Landgraf (see
credits)
last week and he's alive and well in New York. He gives
a thumbs up in the website (who couldn't?) and gave us the
following on the very first days of working on the GR
project:

I got the
job at Galaxy Rangers from an ad placed in the New York
Times Sunday News paper. I had already drawn for DC comics
and Marvel comics so I got the job right away. Most of the
other artists I don't think had too many professional accomplishments
. Mandell created the series but David Gregg was in charge
of getting the work out.

Several art
directors gave out the daily assignments these were mostly
young guys. I was about 29 or 30 at the time . The
first day we didn't draw, we helped move furniture to set up
the front office where Gregg and Mandell worked. The first
room on the left was where Kirney worked. I think she
was a producer (her sister is a producer on Courage the
cowardly dog).

We would
all get a section of the storyboard to work on so we never
knew what the entire story would be. Years later I got a
complete set of all the episodes to find out I had worked on
almost all of 'em. As soon as we finished the boards which
were done in pencil they would be edited and faxed off to
Japan where they would be animated. - Ken Landgraf

Thanks for the info Ken!

The LINKS
section is now OPEN! Got a GR site? Got a
personal site? Head on in and add it to the list!

Friday 11-17-00 - R.B.

Word from Robert Mandell (credits) this
week. As always, he's juggling an obscene amount of
projects.

Books: Keep an eye out for some
children's book series that will appear in 2001 & 2002
(Rave, Web Warriors, and Avalon, Web of
Magic, to name a few). Coming up
soon is a comic book series written by Chris Rowley (credits) and
illustrated by Justin Norman called
"The 3rd Degree."

In the movie area, a live action
feature of Terry Brook's Magic Kingdom For Sale is
in the works. Robert says "if you haven't read this
book, it's terrific stuff." Also, an animated
feature based on the classic Larry Niven (check out All
The Myriad Ways - R.B.) series of Ringworld is in
the works.

TV (does this man
not rest?): Another join up with Chris Rowley, these
two have something that is still being shopped around (so
I'm keeping quiet for the moment). Expect a
kick-butt, all CGI action TV series down the road.
(We'll post more when it develops.)

Galaxy Rangers (Thought
I'd forgotten?): The pursuit for a release (be it
VHS/DVD) is holding a backseat at the moment while Cartoon
Network is reviewing "Tortuna" and "Shoot-Out"
for a possible broadcast window. (Dea Perez is
the VP of programming down there in Atlanta - R.B.)
The possibility of sending some eps to W.B. for review was
mentioned. If all else fails, "we'll continue
to pursue the video releases..."

So,
with all that, we'd like to say "Thanks" to Robert
for taking some time out of his schedule and entertaining
ours interests.

Ran across a new discovery today
during a routine eBay search for Galaxy Rangers
material. Found a listing for some storyboard art from one Ken Landgraf (see
credits)!
Ken's got his own website up. I'll be sending off an
email tomorrow and hopefully we'll get some comments from Ken
and his latest doings.

In the same eBay search, I scoffed up
some action figure pics and added them to their character
profiles (something I hadn't thought of doing until today):

From the mailing list, Daniel
Fiorella has had another article of his posted and this
time is at the online newspaper IM-UR.
Drop by the site, get to the search page and enter
"Fiorella" in the search box. As always, you
can keep up with Dan's work at "Fiorella's Page o'Stuff" (Thanks Daf)